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Dark Chao Adventures
Dark Chao Adventures (DCA) (May 2005 - April 2012) was my first long-term project. It was a script series, an experiment with fanfiction and original content, that premiered on the Chao Civic forums, made its way through my first blog, continued on Chao Talk, and got its own website. The premise was of a cast of Dark chao who episodically dealt with villains of escalating competence. Plot The plot of DCA can be said to be split into two halves (The Beta Avengers and The Veteran's Committee), each consisting of approximately 200,000 words. The Beta Avengers The first season (Shade and Chao) was silly ten-year-old stuff. We were introduced to the general cast of characters, primarily focusing on Shade, the grey Dark chao who ruled the Dark Garden in between struggling with Kindergarten, and Dark, his comic relief friend. The villains ranged from Chao, the pretentious Hero chao leader, to Metal Sonic and his Poker Buddies, who acted as basically bullies, to Invader ZIM, the incompetent alien from the show of the same name. The second season originally revolved around an overarching plot of Dark having to collect seven chaos emeralds while assisted by the Doctor from Doctor Who. Villains ranged from Daleks from the same show to an original cast of ominous figures calling themselves "the MILKMAN and Friends," as well as a chao calling himself "Metal Speedy." Chao Civic went down, and all records of this season were lost. A new second season was eventually written (Dark and Mephiles), mostly focusing on further episodic adventures and introducing a new villain-- Mephiles from Sonic '06, a slightly more competent bully-- before concluding with an attempt at horror as Shade and Dark found themselves thirty years in the future and facing a horrific environment with hive-minded monsters called "the Instability." The third season (The Beta Avengers) introduced the eponymous antagonists-- a coalition of characters from the forgotten beta second season who wished to get their appropriate screentime. The season climaxed with the chao waking up in a strange environment and exploring only to find a forbidden city named Chao Talk, ripped entirely from secretcity. The fourth season (Purflee and Luis) picked up where the third season left off and focused on the chao's explorations of Chao Talk. Not much happened besides a fairly faithful homage to secretcity, at least until the chao found an exit. It turned out a Beta Avenger was behind the whole thing, a mysterious figure named JOE. As the chao returned home to their Gardens, they found the MILKMAN had taken over and had to be defeated, but with his defeat he brings prophecies of an epic journey to happen two seasons later. The fifth season (Echo and Red) had the chao attempt to live their normal lives again in spite of the Beta Avengers' constant threats. Details of the prophetic epic journey are revealed: Shade will soon have to collect eight chaos drives in order to evolve into a Dark/Swim chao so he can defeat the Beta Avengers for once and for all. In the meantime, the main plot is interrupted for "The Secret City," a 66-chapter epic special where the chao wake up in Chao Talk once more and find themselves absolutely trapped. An enigmatic concept is introduced: The Tour Guide, a tall cloaked figure whose identity changes frequently. All the while, the Beta Avengers watch the chao and show characterisation in that they want to actually save the chao from whatever eldritch dangers the city has to offer. In the end, the Tour Guide's many identities are revealed, the most prominent one being Dark's father, twisted and tortured by the unnatural forces of the city. The special ends with Dark's father telling Dark never to come back to Chao Talk, but promising that he will in the end anyway. Then the season concluded with a Portal rip-off and an original story detailing Shade's return to the Dark Garden. The sixth season (The Grey Journey) had Shade go through several video game rip-offs in order to acquire seven or eight chaos drives (it's never consistent) and confront the Beta Avengers for once and for all before they ambiguously destroyed the world. In the end, he discovered the MILKMAN's true identity was his own father. JOE became the true mastermind, with there being two JOEs in the end: Cham, a chao who died after the very first episode, and Metal Speedy, a Metal Sonic-like chao present from the betas who's been pulling all the strings from the shadows. Shade brings Metal Speedy to court and sends him to jail before reviving all the fallen chao and setting the show back to a happier place. The Veteran's Committee The seventh season (The End) began with three simple episodes having the Gardens in conflict over who should be in power, climaxing with another reset and an ominous message from the narrator saying DCA will never be over while "he" is still alive. Then the script took a turn for the grander, first having a rip-off of Metal Gear Solid 2, but alluding to bigger villains called "the Veteran's Committee" who want to end the show. The protagonist of the show became Shadow, a chao who had been present since the first episode but had since been ignored. Shadow had to go through "the Green Journey," collecting seven green chaos drives to become a Dark/Run chao so he'd have the power to save the show. Season Seven extended far beyond any season prior, going to twenty-nine episodes, focusing on Shadow's journey, with Shade, Dark, and Red acting as his supporting characters. The first chaos drive was found at the end of an edited Half-Life 2, the second chaos drive found in an original story acting as The Slender Man creepypasta, the third chaos drive found in another original story paying homage to DCA's roots climaxing with a twisted return to Chao Talk, the fourth chaos drive found in a lengthy original Halloween story in an eldritch forest named Sancheria, the fifth chaos drive found by the Poker Gang in a rip-off of Nightmare House 2, and the sixth chaos drive never being found. But the focus of the season isn't actually on getting the chaos drives; it's on learning more about the Veteran's Committee, who turn out to not necessarily be antagonists, actually aiding the protagonists in their search for chaos drives, albeit never explaining why. During the third chaos drive serial, "unexpected developments" enter the story, with a new Tour Guide appearing in Chao Talk who has extremely powerful script-bending abilities and causes Shawn, Cham, and Echo to regress into their Beta Avenger states. By the time Season Seven ends, the Beta Avengers have been fully revived and declare their intentions to thwart the chao's adventures however they can, and the narrator decides to give the chao a clean slate. Season Eight (The Last Journey) comes in here, with Echo stealing Shadow's five chaos drives and all hope seeming lost. A year passes between the writing of episodes, and when the narrator comes back to the story, all the characters have been driven crazy by the hiatus and agree they need to end the story however they can, preferably on a happy note. So the protagonists partner up with the Veteran's Committee and listen to the Beta Avengers' demands: "Give us one last chance to prove ourselves as formidable antagonists, then we can end the show." However, the unexpected developments make themselves more threatening: Chao Talk grows into a living and shifting abomination city, with the Beta Avengers contorted into eldritch supervillains. So the chao work up their courage and then enter the city for their final showdown. In the final showdown, the new Tour Guide stalks characters, killing them off in bloody explosions, and JOE reveals himself to not even be Cham anymore but to have nothing in his mind and wanting suicide. The new Tour Guide then kills him, revealing himself to be Metal Speedy, having escaped from prison and grown significantly in power. Zero, one of the characters from The Secret City, warns the characters that the more unstable the show becomes, the greater the threat of other beings entering the story becomes. No one heeds this warning, however, and as Echo is smitten down, Shadow takes his chaos drives back and miraculously evolves into a Dark/Run chao, despite that being a glaring inconsistency. With his newfound power and the aid of Shade and Shawn, the protagonists match Metal Speedy's power and... In one ending, Metal Speedy is defeated in a grueling brawl, after which the chao can finally get their closure. In another ending, Shadow does not evolve into a Dark/Run chao, removing that plot hole, leaving Metal Speedy as the winner and only living character left in the show. In either ending, it's already too late, for EAT has shown her face, revealed to be the entity the characters had called "the Instability" in Season Two and the substance known as "Red Metal" in The Secret City. Every character becomes a Camper, and the show is played on an endless loop for unknown reasons. However, some plot holes are still left open... Category:Stories Category:Personal development Category:DCA